Monday, 16 July 2012

Despite a recession and drastic cuts to Arts funding Reading
has seen two new professional theatre companies take-off this year. Reading Between The Lines came earlier in the
year with their first production Off the Block lauded as a “brilliant and
heroic birth”. Now we have Reading Repertory Theatre with their inaugural
production, Harold Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter directed by Paul Stacey Reading
Rep’s Artistic Director.

Two armed hit men, Gus and Ben, kill time in a windowless two
bedded basement room in Birmingham while waiting for their superior, the unseen
Wilson, to tell them of their intended target. And to complicate matters, a
dumb waiter in the upstage wall keeps rumbling and surreally delivering food
orders that the men have no chance of satisfying.

Gus from the start is insecure and restless. He tries to
elicit answers from the calmer Ben. It is only later that we understand Ben’s
reticence in responding to Gus’s demands. Gary Richens as Ben offered a staid
controlling factor in contrast to Rick Romero’s frenetic Gus. Although there
was opportunity, neither actor resorted to caricature. It illustrated the underlying importance that gesture
and attitude can play in drama. From the outset, the contrasting attitudes
establish a tension that is to escalate before reaching the final revelatory
conclusion.

The performance play runs at just over an hour and at first felt
painfully slow. However, it gained pace and delivered a gripping and, at times,
very funny play. This production had humour in spades and it was a delight to
hear an audience so appreciative of Pinter’s skill.

On the other hand, the tension did carry elements of
Pinter’s sense of menace. The small theatre space in itself felt confining and
mirrored in some way the room that held Gus and Ben. An expected feature of the
evening came from the heavy rain hitting the sixty-seat theatre’s flat roof and
unexpectedly augmenting the oppressive gloom of the protagonist’s predicament.

It was an excellent and ambitious start for the new company whose
aim is to be ‘a regional theatre with a national reputation’. Maybe it’s too
early to comment but I really hope they can achieve their goal in what must be
a very demanding economic environment.

Furthermore, they have announced that we can look forward to
further productions this year and next with performances of A Christmas Carol, Osborne’s
Look Back in Anger and Strindberg’s Miss Julie.